Best Ever
Primetime Soap?

“Who shot J.R.?” In the summer of 1980, that question obsessed America in a way that seems impossible now. Three hundred fifty million people worldwide tuned in to find out. Bookies took bets. T-shirts were printed. The resolution — watched by 83 million Americans, still one of the largest audiences in television history — revealed what Dallas had understood from the beginning: we didn’t want J.R. dead. We wanted him to keep getting away with it.

Larry Hagman’s performance is the show’s foundation. J.R. Ewing lies, cheats, manipulates, destroys — and Hagman plays every moment with such relish that you can’t look away. The smile when a scheme comes together. The wounded-boy routine when Mama questions him. The cold-eyed calculation behind the folksy charm. J.R. isn’t a realistic character; he’s an archetype, greed and ambition given a Stetson and a corner office. But Hagman makes him human enough to be fascinating.

The genius of Dallas was treating wealth as spectacle. Southfork Ranch, the oil business, the parties and betrayals — creator David Jacobs built a world where money was the only thing that mattered, and then filled it with people willing to do anything to get it. This was Reagan-era television, arriving just as America decided greed was good. Dallas didn’t critique the ethos; it embodied it, and audiences couldn’t get enough.

The ensemble operated on soap opera logic, which is to say the logic of sustained consequences. Unlike episodic television, where the status quo resets weekly, Dallas accumulated grievances. Bobby’s marriage to Pam pitted the Ewings against the Barneses for a decade. Cliff Barnes’s vendetta against J.R. spanned the entire run. Sue Ellen’s alcoholism, her affairs, her attempts to escape — these weren’t season-long arcs but defining character traits that evolved over years. The serialized structure that prestige TV would later claim as innovation? Dallas did it first.

The women of Dallas deserve more credit than they typically receive. Sue Ellen’s trajectory from trophy wife to independent businesswoman was radical for network television. Pam Barnes Ewing, trapped between families, made choices that drove major storylines. Miss Ellie held the clan together through sheer force of matriarchal will. These weren’t fully feminist portrayals — this was still network TV in the early ’80s — but they were complicated women in a genre that often didn’t bother.

The show’s influence on international television is staggering. Dynasty was the obvious domestic imitator, but Dallas also shaped soap operas in Latin America, Europe, and beyond. The format — wealthy family, business drama, romantic entanglements, cliffhangers — became a global template. When scholars talk about American cultural hegemony in the late twentieth century, Dallas is exhibit A.

Yes, there were missteps. The “dream season” — where an entire year was revealed to be Pam’s dream, resurrecting Bobby from the dead — remains one of television’s most notorious cop-outs. The later seasons repeated plots and lost cast members. But at its peak, from roughly 1978 to 1985, Dallas was appointment television in a way that streaming has made almost impossible to imagine.

The 2012 revival proved the format still worked, with Hagman returning as J.R. until his death. But the original run remains the definitive version — a show that understood Americans wanted to watch rich people behave badly, and delivered that spectacle for fourteen seasons without apology.

Who shot J.R.? Everyone who loved him.

David Jacobs: The Best Ever is villainy as entertainment. Is Dallas the Best Ever Primetime Soap Opera? You tell us.

Decide for Yourself:

• The Complete Collection DVD set includes all fourteen seasons and three reunion movies.
• The individual season releases let you focus on the peak years (Seasons 3-8).
• The 2012 revival series is available separately for those who want the continuation.